THE PARLEMENT--THE STATES-GENERAL--CONFLICT WITH BONIFACE VIII.--THE
DESTRUCTION OF THE KNIGHTS-TEMPLARS
The court of Philip III., pitiful scion of a noble king, is associated
with a dramatic judicial murder at Paris. Among the late-repentant souls
temporarily exiled from purification who crowd around Dante at the foot
of the Mont of Purgatory is that of Pierre de la Brosse, "severed from
its body through hatred and envy and not for any sin committed." Unhappy
Pierre was St. Louis' chamberlain and had been present at his death. He
filled the same high office under his son, became his favourite minister
and all-powerful at court. In 1276 the king's eldest son by his first
queen died under suspicion of poison. The second queen, sister of the
Duke of Brabant, being envious of Pierre's ascendency, began insidiously
to abuse the king's ear. Pierre met the queen's move by clandestinely
spreading a report that the prince was sacrificed to secure the
succession to her own offspring. The king was then persuaded by the
queen's friends to consult a famous prophetess, who declared her
innocent, and Pierre's death was plotted by the queen, her brother of
Brabant, and some discontented and jealous nobles. One morning Paris was
startled by the arrest of the omnipotent minister, who was tried before
a commission packed by his enemies, and hanged on 30th June 1278, by the
common hangman, at the gibbet on Montfaucon, in the presence of the Duke
of Brabant and others of his enemies. The popular belief was that he had
been accused of an attempt on the queen's chastity: actually his
destruction had been compassed by a charge of treason, based on some
forged letters. The tragic end of Pierre de la Brosse excited universal
interest and discussion. Benvenuto da Imola says that Dante, when in
Paris, diligently sought out the truth and convinced himself of the
great minister's innocence.
A prince of far different calibre was the Fourth Philip, surnamed the
Fair, who grappled with and humiliated the great pontiff, Boniface
VIII.--the most resolute upholder of the papacy in her claim to
universal secular supremacy--and thus achieved a task which had baffled
the mighty emperors themselves; a prince who, in Dante's grim metaphor,
scourged the shameless harlot of Rome from head to foot, and dragged her
to do his will in France.
[Illustration: PALAIS DE JUSTICE, CLOCK TOWER AND CONCIERGERIE.]
Philip's reign is remarkable for the establishment of the Parlement and
the first convocation of the States-General in Paris. From earliest
times of the Monarchy, the kings had dispensed justice, surrounded by
the chief Churchmen and nobles of the land, thus constituting an
ambulatory tribunal, which was held wherever the sovereign might happen
to be. In 1302 Philip fixed the tribunal at Paris, restricted it to
judicial functions, and housed it in his palace of the Cité, which, in
1431, when the kings ceased to dwell there, became the Palais de
Justice. The palace was rebuilt by Philip. A vast hall, divided by a row
of columns adorned with statues of the kings of France, and said to have
been the most spacious and most beautiful Gothic chamber in France, with
other courts and offices, accommodated the Parlement. The tribunal was
at first composed of twenty-six councillors or judges, of whom thirteen
were lawyers, presided over by the royal chancellor. It sat twice yearly
for periods of two months, and consisted of three chambers or
courts.[73] The nobles who at first sat among the lay members gradually
ceased to attend owing to a sense of their legal inefficiency, and the
Parlement became at length a purely legal body. During the imprisonment
of the French king, John the Good, in England, the Parlement[74] sat
_en permanence_, and henceforth became the _cour souveraine et capitale_
of the kingdom. The purity of its members was maintained by severest
penalties. In 1336 one of the presidents was convicted of receiving
bribes and hanged. Twelve years later the falsification of some
depositions was punished with the same severity, and in 1545 a corrupt
chancellor was fined 100,000 livres, degraded, and imprisoned for five
years. The chief executive officer of the Parlement, known as the
Concierge, appointed the bailiffs of the court and had extensive local
jurisdiction over dishonest merchants and craftsmen, whose goods he
could burn. His official residence, known as the Conciergerie,
subsequently became a prison, and so remains to this day. The entrance
flanked by the two ancient _tours de César et d'Argent_, is one of the
most familiar objects in Paris. There the Count of Armagnac was
assassinated and the cells are still shown where Marie Antoinette,
Madame Roland, Danton, Robespierre, and many of the chief victims of the
Terror were lodged before their execution.
The same year (1302) saw the ripening of Philip's long quarrel with Pope
Boniface VIII. and the first meeting of the States-General. The king
knew he had embarked on a struggle in which the mightiest potentates had
been worsted: he determined to appeal to the patriotism of all classes
of his subjects and fortify himself on the broad basis of such popular
opinion as then existed. The meeting of the States-General after the
burning of the papal bull in Paris on the memorable Sunday of 11th
February 1302, made an epoch in French history. For the first time
members of the _Tiers Etat_ (the Third Estate, or Commons), sat beside
the two privileged orders of clergy and nobles, and were recognised as
one of the legitimate orders of the realm. The assembly was convoked to
meet in Notre Dame on the 10th of April. The question was the old one
which had rent Christendom asunder for centuries: Was the pope to be
supreme over the princes and peoples of the earth in secular as well as
in spiritual matters? The utmost enthusiasm prevailed, and though the
prelates spoke with a somewhat timid voice the assembled members swore
to risk their lives and property rather than sacrifice the honour of the
crown and their own liberties to the insolent usurpation of the pope.
Excommunication followed, but the king had ordered all the passes from
Italy to be guarded, so that no papal letter or messenger should enter
France. "Boniface, who," says Villani, the Florentine chronicler, "was
proud and scornful, and bold to attempt every great deed, magnanimous
and puissant, replied by announcing the publication of a bull deposing
the king from his throne and releasing his subjects from their
allegiance." Philip, at an assembly in the garden of the palace in the
Cité, and in presence of the chief ecclesiastical, religious and lay
authorities, again laid his case before the people and read an appeal
against the pope to a future Council of the Church.
The bull of deposition was to be promulgated on 8th September. On 7th
September, while the aged pope was peacefully resting at his native city
of Anagni, Guillaume de Nogaret, bearing the royal banner of France,
Sciarra Colonna and other disaffected Italian nobles, with three hundred
horsemen, flung themselves into Anagni, crying--"Death to Pope
Boniface." The papal palace was unguarded; at the first alarm the
cardinals fled and hid themselves, and all but a few faithful servants
forsook their master. The defenceless pope believed that his hour was
come, but, writes Villani, "Great-souled and valiant as he was, he said,
'Since like Jesus Christ I must be taken by treachery and suffer death,
at least I will die like a pope.' He commanded his servants to robe him
in the mantle of Peter, to place the crown of Constantine on his head
and the keys and crozier in his hands." He ascended the papal throne and
calmly waited. Guillaume, Sciarra and the other leaders burst into the
apartment, sword in hand, uttering the foulest of insults; but awed and
cowed by the indomitable old pontiff, who stood erect in appalling
majesty, their weapons dropped and none durst lay a hand upon him. They
set a guard outside the room and proceeded to loot the palace. For three
days the grand old pontiff--he was eighty-six years of age--remained a
prisoner, until the people of Anagni rallied and rescued him, and he
returned to Rome. In a month the humiliated Boniface died of a broken
heart, and before two years were passed his successor in Peter's chair,
Pope Clement V., revoked all his bulls and censures, expunged them from
the papal register, solemnly condemned his memory and restored the
Colonna family to all their honours. Dante, who hated Boniface as
cordially as Philip did, and cast him into hell, was yet revolted at the
cruelty of the "new Pilate, who had carried the fleur-de-lys into
Anagni, who made Christ captive, mocked Him a second time, renewed the
gall and vinegar, and slew Him between two living thieves." But the "new
Pilate was not yet sated." The business at Anagni had only been effected
_spendendo molta moneta_; the disastrous battle of Courtrai and the
inglorious Flemish wars had exhausted the royal treasury; the debasement
of the coinage had availed nought, and Philip turned his lustful eyes on
a once powerful lay order, whose wealth and pride were the talk of
Christendom.
[Illustration: ILE DE LA CITÉ.]
After the capture of Jerusalem and the establishment there of a
Christian kingdom, pilgrims flocked to the holy places. Soon, however,
piteous stories reached Jerusalem of the cruel spoliation and murder of
unarmed pilgrims on their journey from the coast by hordes of roving
lightly-armed Bedouins, against whom the heavily-armed Franks were
powerless. The evil was growing well-nigh intolerable when, in 1118, two
young French nobles, Hugh of Payens and Godfrey of St. Omer, with other
seven youths of highest birth, bound themselves into a lay community,
with the object of protecting the pilgrims' way. They took the usual vow
of poverty, charity and obedience; St. Bernard drew up their
Rule--and we may be sure it was austere enough--pope and patriarch
confirmed it. Their garb was a mantle of purest white linen with a red
cross embroidered on the shoulder. The order was housed in a wing of the
king's palace, which was built on the site of Solomon's Temple, hard by
the Holy Sepulchre, and its members called themselves the Poor Soldiers
of Christ and of Solomon's Temple. Their banner, half of black, half of
white, was inscribed with the device "_non nobis Domine_." Their
battle-cry "Beauceant," and their seal, two figures on horseback, have
not been satisfactorily interpreted--the latter probably portrays a
knight riding away with a rescued pilgrim. Soon the little band of nine
was joined by hundreds of devoted youths from rich and noble families;
endowments to provide them with arms and horses and servants flowed in,
and thus was formed the most famous, the purest and the most heroic body
of warriors the world has ever seen. Hugh de Payens had gathered three
hundred Knights-Templars around him at Jerusalem: in five years nearly
every one had been slain in battle. But enthusiasm filled the ranks
faster than they were mowed down: none ever surrendered and the order
paid no money for ransom. When hemmed in by overwhelming numbers, they
fought till the last man fell, or died, a wounded captive, in the hands
of the Saracens. Of the twenty-two Grand Masters seven were killed in
battle, five died of wounds, and one of voluntary starvation in the
hands of the infidel.
When Acre was lost, and the last hold of the Christians in the Holy Land
was wrested from them, only ten Knights-Templars of the five hundred who
fought there escaped to Cyprus. They chose Jacques de Molay for Grand
Master, replenished their treasury and renewed their members; but their
mission was gone for ever. The order was exempt from episcopal
jurisdiction and subject to the pope alone: its wealth, courage and
devotion were rusting for lack of employment. Boniface VIII., with that
grandeur and daring which make of him despite his faults, so magnificent
a figure in history, conceived the idea of uniting them with the other
military orders--the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights--and making
of the united orders an invincible army to enforce on Europe the decrees
of a benevolent and theocratic despotism. They soon became suspected and
hated by bishops and kings alike, and at length were betrayed by the
papacy itself to their enemies.
In 1304, a pair of renegade Templars,[75] who for their crimes were
under sentence of imprisonment for life in the prison at Toulouse,
sought an introduction to the king, and promised in return for their
liberty to give information of certain monstrous crimes and sacrileges
of common and notorious occurrence in the order. Depositions were taken
and sent to the king's creature, Pope Clement V. Some communication
passed between them, but no action was taken and the matter seemed to
have lapsed. About a year after these events the pope wrote an
affectionate letter to Jacques de Molay, inviting him to bring the
treasure of the order and his chief officers to France, to confer with
himself and the king respecting a new crusade. Jacques and his
companions, suspecting nothing, came and were received by pope and king
with great friendliness: the treasure, twelve mules' load of gold and
silver, was stored in the vaults of the great fortress of the Templars
at Paris. Some rumours reached de Molay of the delation made by the
Toulousian prisoners, but the pope reassured him in an interview, April
1307, and lulled him into security. On 14th September of the same year
all the royal officers of the realm were ordered to hold themselves
armed for secret service on 12th October, and sealed letters were handed
to them to be opened on that night. At dawn on the 13th, all the
Templars in France were arrested in their beds and flung into the
episcopal gaols, and the bishops then proceeded to "examine" the
prisoners. One hundred and forty were dealt with in Paris, the centre of
the order. The charges and a confession of their truth by the Grand
Master were read to them: denial, they were told, was useless; liberty
would be the reward of confession, imprisonment the penalty of denial.
[Illustration: PALACE OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF SENS.]
A few confessed and were set free. The remainder were "examined."
Starvation and torture of the most incredible ferocity did their work.
Thirty-six died under torture in Paris, and many others in other places:
most of the remainder confessed to anything the inquisitors required.
The pope, warned by the growing feeling in Europe, now became alarmed,
and the next act in the drama opens at Paris, where a papal commission
sat at the Abbey of St. Genevieve, to hear what the Templars had to say
in their defence. All were invited to give evidence and promised
immunity in the name of the pope. Hundreds came to Paris to defend their
order,[76] but having been made to understand by the bishops that they
would be burned as heretics if they retracted their confessions, they
held back for a time until solemnly assured by the papal commissioners
that they had nothing to fear, and might freely speak. Ponzardus de
Gysiaco, preceptor of Payens, then came forward and disclosed the
atrocious means used to extort confessions, and said if he were so
tortured again he would confess anything that were demanded of him. He
would face death, however horrible, even by boiling and fire, in defence
of his order, but long-protracted and agonising torture was beyond human
endurance. He was sent back to confinement and the warders were bidden
to see that he suffered naught for what he had said. The rugged old
master, Jacques de Molay, scarred by honourable wounds, the marks of
many a battle with the infidel, was brought before the court and his
alleged confession was read to him. He was stupefied, and swore that if
his enemies were not priests he would know how to deal with them. A
second time he was examined and preposterous charges of unnatural
crimes were preferred against the order by the king's chancellor,
Guillaume de Nogaret. They were drawn from a chronicle at St. Denis, and
based on certain statements alleged to have been made by Saladin, Sultan
of Babylon (Egypt). Again he was stupefied, and declared he had never
heard of such things. And now the Templars' courage rose. Two hundred
and thirty-one came forward, emaciated, racked and torn; among them one
poor wretch was carried in, whose feet had been burnt off by slow fires.
Nearly all protested that the confessions had been wrung from them by
torture, that their accusers were perjurers, and that they would
maintain the purity of their order _usque ad mortem_ ("even unto
death"). Many complained that they were poor, illiterate soldiers,
neither able to pay for legal defence nor to comprehend the charges
indicted in Latin against them. When the commissioners went to
interrogate twenty Templars detained in the abbey of St. Genevieve, a
written petition was handed to them by the prisoners, with a prayer to
the papal notaries to correct the bad Latin. It was Philip's turn now to
be alarmed, but the prelates were equal to the crisis. The archbishop of
Sens, metropolitan of Paris and brother of the king's chief adviser,
convoked a provincial court at his palace in Paris, and condemned to the
stake fifty-four of the Knights who had retracted their confessions. On
the 10th of May the papal commissioners were appealed to: they expressed
their sorrow that the episcopal court was beyond their jurisdiction, but
would consider what might be done. Short time was allowed them. The
stout-hearted archbishop was not a man to show weakness; he went
steadily on with his work, and in spite of appeals from the papal judges
for delay, the fifty-four were led forth on the afternoon of the
12th[77] to the open country outside the Porte St. Antoine, near the
convent of St. Antoine des Champs, and slowly roasted to death. They
bore their fate with the constancy of martyrs, each protesting his
innocence with his last breath, and declaring that the charges alleged
against the order were false. Two days later, six more were sent to the
stake at the Place de Grève. In spite of threats, the prelates went on
with their grim work of terror. Many of the bravest Templars still gave
the lie to their traducers, but the majority were cowed: further
confessions were obtained, and the pope was satisfied. The proudest,
bravest and richest order in Christendom was crushed or scattered to the
four corners of the world. Their vast estates were nominally confiscated
to the Knights Hospitallers; but our "most dear brother in Christ,
Philip the king, although he was not moved by avarice nor intended the
appropriation of the Templars' goods"[78] had to be compensated for the
expense of the prosecution. The treasure of the order failed to satisfy
the exorbitant claims of the crown, and the Hospitallers were said to
have been impoverished rather than enriched by the transfer.
The last act was yet to come. On 11th March 1314, a great stage was
erected in the _parvis_ of Notre Dame, and there, in chairs of state,
sat the pope's envoy, a cardinal, the archbishop of Sens, and other
officers of Christ's Church on earth. The Grand Master, Jacques de
Molay, and three preceptors were exposed to the people, their alleged
confession and the papal bull suppressing the order, and condemning them
to imprisonment for life, were read by the cardinal. But, to the
amazement of his Eminence, when the clauses specifying the enormities to
which the accused had confessed were being recited, the veteran Master
and the preceptor of Normandy rose, and in loud voices, heard of all the
people, repudiated the confession, and declared that they were wholly
guiltless, and ready to suffer death. They had not long to wait. Hurried
counsel was held with the king, and that same night Jacques de Molay
and the preceptor of Normandy were brought to a little island on the
Seine, known as the Isle of the Trellises,[79] and burnt to death,
protesting their innocence to the last.
"God pays debts, but not in money." An Italian chronicler relates that
the Master, while expiring in the flames, solemnly cited pope and king
to meet him before the judgment-seat of God. In less than forty days
Clement V. lay dead: in eight months Philip IV. was thrown by his horse
and went to his account. Seven centuries later the grisly fortress of
the Templars opened its portals, and the last of the unbroken line of
the kings of France, Louis XVI., was led forth to a bloody death.
Those who would read the details of the dramatic examination at Paris
before the papal commissioners, may do so in the minutes published by
Michelet.[80] The great historian declares that a study of the evidence
shook his belief in the Templars' innocence, and that if he were writing
his history again, he must needs alter his attitude towards them. Such
is not the impression left on the mind of the present writer. Moreover
it has been pointed out that there is a suspicious identity in the
various groups of testimonies, corresponding to the episcopal courts
whence such testimonies came. The royal officers, after the severest
search, could find not a single compromising document in the Templars'
houses: nothing but a few account books, works of devotion and copies of
St. Bernard's Rule. There were undoubtedly unworthy and vicious knights
among the fifteen thousand Templars belonging to the order, but the
charges brought against them are too monstrous for belief. The call
which they had responded to so nobly, however, had long ceased. They
were wealthy, proud and self-absorbed. Sooner or later they must
infallibly have gone the way of all organisations which have outlived
their use and purpose. It is the infamy of their violent destruction for
which pope and king must answer at the bar of history.
[Illustration: THE SEINE AT ALFORTVILLE.]